Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[Gulliver Foyle]

In defense of the KJV: It's been a major part of English literature from the beginning. English lit,
and no other. There's good reason for that. If you must insist on repeating Iron Age* campfire tales, then
goddammit do it in high speech! Make it resound! The guy who composed the warhorse passage in Job
deserves to Englished with drums and trumpets!

All that superstitious crap about gods and kosher and messiahs, etc. can stay on the shelf.

* "Bronze Age bedtime stories" alliterates and has a good rhythm, and I'd love to irritate the
Chrrrristianists with it (even scare some of 'em), but it's not accurate. Late Bronze/Early Iron Age,
ca. 1,000 BC, is about as early as OT texts get. So I'm told. Damn if I can stay awake over any religious
text. I'd sooner browse ole Rudyard's Just So Stories.

The KJV was written in cod Elizabethan to give it a veneer of authenticity through faked antiquity.

From the first day of its publication it was written in an English people found hard to understand.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

The free will arguments fail because god is quite happen to directly interfere with some people's free will. For example in Exodus he ensures Pharaoh doesn't let the Hebrews go until god wants him to. (Always suprises me that Christians seem to skip over god killing all the first born, sure some first horns will be adults and could have sinned but what about the babes in arms? Plus of course it introduces a novel form of slavery...)

Plus you can't have an all powerful god and free will in the same reality.

The impossibility becomes even more stark when you include god's alleged omniscience.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Tell that to your employer.

My employer is the nation, a collective entity which includes me.

Plus I get paid reasonably well for my work.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Ah, but the British never tried to impose Christianity or export it. They were just in it for the money.

And of course I'm being sarcastic, but it shows how easily some simple arguments can be made by ignoring all the rest of the circumstances.

Oh the Brits very much did try to export christianity. Livingstone, for example, was a missionary. Plus the country's the main reason the First Nations are mostly some form of protestant.

 

[catsmate]

Tell that to your employer.

Stop trying to distract from your inability to answer difficult moral, ethical, historical and scientific questions.

 

[catsmate]

What has that got to do with slavery?

Nothing. It's a distraction.

 

[Mojo]

What has that got to do with slavery?

FOTLers claim that having to work for a living is equivalent to slavery.

 

[Helen]

All early European translations of the bible are problematic; they have become part of our cultures, which is more or less the only reason people think the language sounds so poetic, and striking. They're not very good translations, though, the people translating them simply didn't know enough about the languages they were translating from, and, sometimes, weren't all that great at their own language either. If you find KJV compelling, it's not because it's so good, but because it's what you are accostumed to think of as  the translation. The same is true of, for instance, Karl XII's bible here in Sweden. And people in Sweden didn't understand it back then either, which of course made it seem even more impressive...

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Here is where I like to throw in..
" What bothers me the most about the idea of Heaven, is the thought of spending eternity with most of the people who claim to be heading there."

 

[Rusty Tyler]

 

[JayUtah]

No one is going to watch your videos, Rusty. Use your words.

 

[JayUtah]

No worries.

I certainly don't have any worries. But when your argument is to ask, "Can millions of Christians be wrong?" your own answer seems to be yes they can. If they can just make up whatever they want and call it Christianity, then you have a harder time saying that there is a single reading of scripture that everyone subscribes to.

 

[sackett]

Here's a question I've wanted to ask a believer for long ages: Where does religion exist?

Now lessee, can I find a believer to ask? Hmm.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Here's a question I've wanted to ask a believer for long ages: Where does religion exist?

In the hearts of Men, and the uteri of Women.

 

[sackett]

In the hearts of Men, and the uteri of Women.

Aw butt out, atheeizt! I wanna talk to a genuine pure honest-to-pete Believere!

Gimme that real-time religion. None of your Ersazt Intelligence, THANK yew.

ETA: Dammit, what do I got to do to find a bleever? Leave a trail of M & Ms?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Stop trying to distract from your inability to answer difficult moral, ethical, historical and scientific questions.

It may look like he's trying to distract, but what he's actually been doing is confirming his inability to answer difficult moral, ethical, historical, and scientific questions.

I applaud his achievement, even if it wasn't what he was trying to achieve.

 

[catsmate]

No one is going to watch your videos, Rusty. Use your words.

Exactly.

 

[Olmstead]

Tell that to your employer.

I hear you're a communist now, Rusty. How'd you get interested in that type of thing?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It may look like he's trying to distract, but what he's actually been doing is confirming his inability to answer difficult moral, ethical, historical, and scientific questions.

I applaud his achievement, even if it wasn't what he was trying to achieve.

He hasn't managed to demonstrate a depth of knowledge on anything, but in fairness he has displayed a breadth of ignorance that few could match, particularly impressive in such a short time.

 

[turingtest]

This thread seems to have devolved into one where it's less about squaring Christian beliefs with the TOE than it is about squaring Christian beliefs with Christianity.